Computers and consumer devices have become increasingly more advanced, allowing consumers to do more things, in more places, and in less time. Consumers have regularly used various consumer devices to purchase sale items on the internet and engage in electronic commerce (e-commerce). In a conventional online shopping environment, a consumer would see an advertisement for a sale item, for example through one web site, navigate or be redirected to another website offering the sale item, such as a vendor web site having various items for sale, find the sale item on that website or be directed to a particular web page relating to the sale item of interest, add the sale item to a shopping cart, confirm shipping and billing details, and then purchase the sale item through the vendor web site. This type of purchasing process requires substantial time and interaction on the part of the consumer, and as a result has a high abandonment rate. As the current advertising methods are inefficient, a relatively small percentage of digital advertisements lead to consumer purchases. Further, vendors or retailers should remain challenged to generate sales growth in a weak economic environment. In their quest for sales growth, among other things, vendors must reassess the effectiveness of their various marketing strategies.
Product placement has played a key role in advertising for decades. For example, moving images, such as a television show or a movie can potentially contain dynamic advertisements. Similarly, mediums such as digital newspapers and digital magazines are utilized for providing advertisements. For example, a digital article in an architectural magazine may show a photograph illustrating the design of a room in connection with an article about the building in which the room exists. It may not be common for such an article to include the particulars of all the sale items shown in the photograph, since the article is about the building. Certain sale items in the photograph may be labeled and can be easily referenced and found by the consumer, for example, through search engines or through vendor information shown in the graphics of the article which helps the shopper browse a vendor web site and research a sales item. However, there are hundreds of sale items advertised in digital media that do not have labels visually associated with them which make it difficult or even impossible for the average consumer to find out who made these sale items or how to purchase them.
A study by Adobe® Digital Index (ADI) of Adobe Systems Incorporated has shown that static advertising is not overly effective in generating sales whereas interactive digital advertising is substantially more effective. Interactive digital advertising allows interaction between a prospective consumer and the digital device on which the digital advertising is displayed. Some websites that offer sale items have attempted to streamline the online shopping process by providing dynamic advertisements linking the sale items contained therein to third party websites where the sale items can be researched and purchased. Such linking can be achieved via individual hyperlinks for each sale item or product in the dynamic advertisement. For example, consider an image displayed in a digital newspaper comprising multiple purchasable sale items linked to individual sites where each sale item can be purchased from. A consumer may be able to mouse over an image of a specific sale item that he/she is interested in and be directly linked to that particular sale item by clicking on the image of the sale item. Multiple hyperlinks can be provided which allow the shopper to redirect to multiple web pages or web sites. Each sales item might need to be researched one at a time. An editorial picture in an article can thus be dynamically transformed into an advertisement that provides multiple purchasable goods. This can therefore allow almost any photograph to be turned into an advertisement, and allow the photograph to convey whatever original meaning was intended.
However, a hyperlink causes the consumer to leave the primary digital media they are viewing, such as a web site on their digital device, to visit the vendor's secondary or remote website through which details on the item can be viewed and the purchase can be made. If the digital media is being viewed in a separate application, for example, a news reader, clicking on the hyperlink requires launching and switching to a browser, which can take considerable time, resources, and patience on the part of the consumer. Ultimately, the consumer may have to open multiple applications or web sites to view the primary digital media and shop for the various sales items, and when completed, then the consumer must find and return to the original digital media application to continue their activities. Therefore, such an option takes or redirects the consumer away from the original digital media they are viewing, which can deter the consumer from making the purchase or can pull the consumer away from the digital media and the associated advertisements and reduce the possibility of additional purchases. Hence, there is a need to improve the display of sale item information on a consumer device and improve the initiation of a transaction for the sale item without detracting from the original digital media.
Hence, there is a long felt but unresolved need for a computer implemented method and a sales management system that improve the display of interactive digital content within digital media on a consumer device, promote shopping and transactions for sale items without detracting from the digital media, and generate sales through the interactive digital content within the digital media.